Page 93 of The Boy Bride

But Lill was already scooting across the cushions to get down from the seating platform.

“He hasn’t come to drink, you goose. He’s come to walk me home.”

“Ready to leave?” Vanu signed as Lill reached the door.

Lill nodded. He slipped out into the night beside his husband. “Thanks for inviting me, Halza. Thanks for the wine, Tirtu! Good night, Padunu!”

“Good night!”

“Is he leaving? Na Urárti, are you leaving?”

“Good night!”

Vanu pulled the door closed after them, since Halza was already weaving his way back toward the table. Vanu’s hand was warm on the base of Lill’s neck, gently steering him onto the path homeward.

“Were you singing? Haven’t heard you sing before.”

Lill smiled in the moonlight. “I’m full of surprises. But being a good singer is not one of them.”

“I thought you sounded fine. Happy to hear you sing any time.”

Lill laughed and butted his head against Vanu’s upper arm.

“Drink too much?”

“Yeah. Can’t you tell?”

“With you? No.”

“I ate some bread and refused a third cup, so hopefully I should be all right.”

Vanu rubbed his hand between Lill’s shoulder-blades. “You’ll be fine. Drink some water before you go to bed.”

They reached the door of their house. Vanu unhooked a key from his belt and unlocked the door. He held it open but did not go in.

“You can take yourself up to bed all right? I’m going over to the great house to get Gurti to look in on the other three in a bit, make sure they don’t do themselves any harm.”

“That’s so thoughtful of you.”

“Nah, shouldn’t foist it on her. Should go back there and keep an eye on them myself—but I don’t wanna.”

Lill nodded. “Na Gurti will be happy to help. Yes, I can put myself to bed. I’ll remember to drink water.”

“Good.” Vanu leaned down and kissed him. When he straightened up, Lill saw him subtly lick his lips.

Lill went inside, and the door closed behind him. He heard Vanu’s key turn in the lock.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a generous drink of water from the pitcher that they kept in the window embrasure. He went up the stairs to his room slowly and stood for a minute at the foot of his bed. He should go to sleep—he would—but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. He opened the door to the balcony and went out.

There were no lights burning in the girls’ house, but he went cautiously all the same in case one of them was awake and looking out a window. He made his way down the exterior stairs and around to the far side of the yard. He reached the round hut with the broken roof beyond the girls’ house.

It would have been better if he’d had an opportunity to examine the lock on the door in daylight. For that matter, it would have been better to attempt this on a different night. He no longer felt drunk, but he knew he was moving slower and with less skill than usual. It took him several minutes to figure out how to approach the lock, and then he had to sacrifice two different arrows because he clumsily broke one of the fletches from the first one in trying to remove it, and the others snapped off in the lock. A sloppy business altogether. But finally the lock fell away, and the door swung open.

The moonlight fell through the hole in the roof and showed the interior of the hut clearly. There were lanterns hanging on the wall, along with a shovel and a coil of rope. He looked down at the floor, expecting a trap door. Instead, the floor was the bare stone of the mountain, which opened up in the middle of the hut in an irregular hole, a sort of crack in the ground. Lill stepped closer and crouched to peer down into it. Dimly in the blackness he made out rough-hewn stone steps leading down, down, out of sight.

A hand landed heavily on his shoulder, an implacable grip like iron that he had not felt since that day three weeks ago under the tree in the well yard. He spun unsteadily, would probably have fallen into the hole in the ground if Vanu hadn’t been hauling him to his feet.

The expression on Vanu’s face. Lill had seen him look stern often enough; it was his resting expression. But this was Vanu angry. He hadn’t seen this before.